The Explicit Teaching of Social-Emotional Skills Through Storytelling

State testing pressures and loss of academic time due to COVID (2019) have pushed academics forward while leaving behind Social Emotional Learning (SEL). With little time for SEL, teachers need to integrate it through other content areas. However, educators have voiced challenges when integrating SEL within content. Research has shown an increase in the implementation of SEL but also indicates that not all teachers are formally teaching it. Since not all teachers are teaching SEL, some students do not have access to the necessary resources to gain lifelong social-emotional skills. This creates an inequitable learning environment within the classroom. This capstone project integrates SEL and read-aloud while using dialogic reading, explicit vocabulary teaching, and writing prompts to answer the question, How can educators ensure students are benefitting from explicitly teaching SEL through storytelling? This ensures educators are creating a more equitable learning environment in a simplistic way by providing students with the necessary resources to gain social-emotional skills.